Sexuality between State and Class: An Introduction

Abstract

This symposium brings together the shared commitment of antideterminist Marxist and queer theory to explore the mutually constituting and indeterminate relationships between class, sexuality, and governance. Contributors call attention to the imperatives of theorizing in relation to discourses of economy, state, finance, psychology and care, and agendas of national development and neoliberal/post-neoliberal governance. Specific discussions include a queer reading of how economy functions as intimacy's other in national income accounts; troubling the idealized heteroproper family in Indian postcolonial state formation; the heteronormatively grounded ideology of development in contemporary Ecuador; the emerging neoliberalism of couples therapy in the United States; and the configuration of class, race, gender, and sexuality that informs inscriptions of ideal migrant care workers on the global stage. By highlighting both the ideological collusions and disjunctures of capitalism and sexuality, the papers in this symposium broaden the landscape of critical analysis and disruption.